


Domestic Diversions

by TheFluffyAbomination



Category: Leverage
Genre: Domestic Fluff, Multi, OT3, Pre-OT3, Random & Short, Work In Progress, a hacker a hitter and a thief own a bar, and sometimes angst, in-between, might have nate and sophie on the side, no actual jobs
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-11-17
Updated: 2016-11-30
Packaged: 2018-05-02 01:12:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 2,267
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5228192
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheFluffyAbomination/pseuds/TheFluffyAbomination
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>some short glimpses in to the day-to-day getting-alongs (and not-getting-alongs) of our favorite hacker, hitter and thief</p>
<p>(Not in linear form, but certainly interconnected and with in the same 'verse)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So, this is my first fanfiction in....three years? and my first time posting on this site. I'm a little unsure as to how things work. That being said, I am hoping to do more chapters in this vein, so if you have any prompts or ideas, feel free to let me know! (However, please, keep it sfw!)
> 
> (Also, you may have seen something like this a while ago on tumblr. This is me expanding on something I already wrote there.)

After they come back from a particularly muddy job involving the Mississippi, there’s a bit of an argument between Hardison and Eliot over who gets to use the washing machine first.

Actually, it’s not so much an argument over who gets to use the washer first as it is Eliot trying to convince Hardison that it is perfectly fine for the two of them to wash the nice button-downs they had to wear to pull off the con together, and that _no, it will not damage the colors to wash them together!_

Hardison pulls his shirt up from the tank as it’s filling. “Look, all I’m saying is, you can’t wash the light pinks and the pale blues together. See-“ and he fiddles with the shirt till he manages to locate the small tag with the washing instructions, “ it says here, on the tag, _'wash with like colors’_. Do pink and blue look like ‘like colors’ to you?”

Eliot grabs the shirt from him forcefully (though not too forcefully-if he ripped the shirt while arguing with Hardison that it wasn’t going to get damaged, the geek would be _insufferable_ ) and shoved it back in the washer. “It doesn’t matter, as long as they’re both pastels!”

“Excuse me.” Parker slips up besides them with a fully-loaded basket and dumps the entirety of it into the machine before slamming the lid. The other two turn and stare at her, Eliot’s brow furrowed and Hardison’s mouth gaping. She shrugs. “What? You guys were taking too long.”

As she saunters back out again, Hardison throws up his hands and tilts his head toward Eliot. “Most of her clothes are black or dark gray anyway, so not such a big deal for her.”

“ _Hardison, our shirts are still in there!"_


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mentions of canon jobs in this one. (Of particular note is 'The Grave Danger Job', which I will be referring to again at some because SO. MANY. FEELS.) Eliot-centric, also.

It becomes a regular thing, after they take down Tony Kadjic, for Eliot to head out to a batting cage any time a job doesn’t go well. Yeah, it’s probably not the best form of stress relief out there, but sometimes it’s so nice to just _hit_ something and know that no one is going to get hurt by your display of aggression. No one is going to feel intimidated, or scared, look at him like he’s a bull in a china shop waiting to explode.

(Not that the team does, usually, but…well, normal people who don’t know what he does for a living, they’re different. )

It doesn’t lessen the guilt over what he’s already done. It just doesn’t _add_ to it either, and that’s new. It’s nice.

At first, he makes sure to drive a few hours from the city, in order to keep himself (or rather, Roy Chappell) from being recognized. But after Hardison nearly dies from being buried alive, he stops caring and instead just walks into the first one he finds and pays for several hours’ worth of balls to hit. Surprisingly, his time there is kept a secret, so he decides to return the next time he feels the need to smash into something. After all, it’s more efficient to be only a few minutes away if the team needs him, instead of an hour and a half.

(He never finds out that Nate started paying off the owners and employees of every batting cage he went to, as soon as he figured out what Eliot was doing, or that after Nate and Sophie leave, Parker picks up on doing it. Or that Hardison has been scrubbing the cameras and keeping a close eye on the web for any mentions or sightings of his alternate identity. Because it’s _his_ job to do the fighting, to use his strength to protect them against the physical threats. But these are _their_ strengths, and they’ll use them to protect _him_ just as fiercely.)


	3. Thanksgiving Part I

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Parker has a very important question....

“What’s it like to have a real Thanksgiving?”

“What?”

Parker gestures impatiently from her seat on the countertop. “You know, a real Thanksgiving. With the turkey and pies and watching the parade and having over all of your family?”

Eliot pauses in the middle of slicing through something long and green. “Why’d you wanna know about that?”

She shrugs, her speech tumbling out in the way it usually did when she was nervous. “Well, we’re usually off on a job this time of year, so I don’t think about it much. But it’s in a week and there have been people talking about their plans for it down at the bar and I just got curious, I guess? I mean, I never had one, you know? But you guys grew up differently than I did so I just thought that you might be able to tell me what it was like.”

“You want to know what it’s like?” Eliot resumes chopping, only to stop and turn while holding the knife in what would have been, to anyone else, a threatening manner. “A pain the ass, that’s what it’s like.” He ignores Hardison’s indignant “Eliot!” as he continues, “You cook from before dawn until midafternoon in a hot kitchen, only to have people constantly critique your food and compare it to whoever made dinner last year, and every time you think you’ve got five minutes to sit down and eat, somebody comes up and starts talking to you. And after it’s all over with, you think any of them are staying to help you wash the dishes? Of course not.”

“Not to mention how awkward it gets when all those family members you only see once or twice a year show up.” Hardison chimes in. “All of that ‘Alec, you should get outside more! Go play some sports!’ I was learning how to hack international banks. I didn’t have any time for sports!” Parker and Eliot both stare at him as he finally brings his ranting reminiscence to a halt. “What?”

The two of them roll their eyes before Parker speaks again. “So I didn’t miss anything?”

“Nope.”

“Nuh-uh.”

“Cool.” She hops off the counter and leaves.

The kitchen’s quiet for a few minutes, as Eliot finishes with his vegetables and adds them to a pan he’s got on the stove. Then he turns to Hardison (having apparently measured it to be long enough that Parker should be gone-though they can’t really be sure without tracking her) and says, “You know we can’t let this stand, right?”

“I’ll contact Nate and Sophie.”

“Good,” he says as the other man leaves the room. “And they were right, you know? You should have played some more sports! Then I wouldn’t need to save your ass all the time!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tbh, I had this written out months ago. BUT! it wasn't until yesterday that I figured out how to solve a problem I was having with the second part. What is that? Well, you'll just have to read part 2 to see :P


	4. Thanksgiving, Part II

“Parker, come on. Get up.”

“What is it?”

“Just get up!”

“All right, all right.”

It’s early enough in the morning that it’s still dark out, this time of the year. Parker squints over at Hardison in the half-lit room and _whoa_ -

“Did you drug me?”

“What?”

She flaps a hand at him. “You’re all dressed and ready to go, but I didn’t wake up at all.”

“Nah, I just set everything out last night and made sure to be extra quiet. Didn’t want to spoil the surprise.”

 _That,_ of course, immediately wakes Parker up all the way. “Surprise?”

“Mm-hmm.”

She clambers out of the bed. “What is it? Did you steal something? Are we going somewhere to steal something? Did we catch someone stealing something Are we-“ He presses a finger to her lips, “Wait.” He laughs at her pout, backing out of the room and telling her to dress warm, because they’re going out.

An hour later, they’re pulling up to a movie theater that appears to be closed. Hardison parks the car, then gets out. He hustles her inside, showing her to a screening room. “All right, so, I gotta go check on the equipment, make sure everything’s all set up for the, the thing, so you go ahead and get comfy, and I will be right back.”

“Hardison, what are we doing here?” She calls after him. “Why did Elliot stay home? Why are we out in the middle of nowhere?” He either can’t hear her (possible) or is ignoring her in favor of getting to see her expression when she realizes whatever it is they’ve come here for (likely). Which is why, the minute he comes up and sits next to her, she explodes at him with, “Will you please tell me what is going on here?!”

“There aren’t any parades close by.” She raises an eyebrow. “I mean, yeah, we could have hopped on a flight and gone to see one in person, but then we wouldn’t have been able to make it back in time. So…”-he taps a few buttons on his and the movie screen in front of them lights up-“I called in a few favors, rented this place out for the next few hours, and we should be good to go.”

She blinks as the pieces slot together in her mind. “We’re going to watch the parade?” She squeals in excitement, knocking Hardison back in his seat as she tries to hug him over the armrest. “Hardison, this is amazing!”

***

About two hours into the parade, she recalls something he said earlier. “Hardison, what did you mean when you said we wouldn’t make it back in time?”

“Oh, that?” He chuckles, the sound low and fond. “Day’s not over yet, babe. You wait and see.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Unfortunately, I have to head out for work -blegh!- so this part doesn't have everything I wanted in it. But that just means there's going to have to be a part 3, doesn't it?


	5. Thanksgiving Part III

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And when they return, it is to find....

“Aww, come on. You really wouldn’t jump off the roof of the World Trade Center if you were going to land on a giant balloon?”

“I don’t care if I’m going to land in a giant bucket of orange soda, woman. No way am I going to jump off a five hundred-meter building!”

“Why would you jump into a bucket of orange soda? That just sounds gross. And anyway, it’s five hundred and forty…..one….” She trails off and freezes in place as they come into the dining area of the bar. “What happened here?”

‘What happened’ is that the chairs and tables are no longer set up as they were, against the walls and evenly spaced across the floor. Instead, the tables have been pushed (and spares have been added) together to form three long tables that run nearly from one end of the room to the other.

Parker’s head twists rapidly from one side to another as she tries mentally to remap the floor. Finally she stops and runs across the room, leaping up and over the tables to get to the bar. “Elliot!” she calls out. “Elliot, someone moved our furniture!”

“Parker, _I_ did that!” He comes out from the back, hair tied back, wiping his hands on a towel.

“What? Why?”

He looks over at Hardison, who has finally managed to make his way _around_ the tables (unless it’s for a con-or to escape from being caught in a con- he does not jump onto tables. His Nana had instilled in him _some_ manners, after all.) and asks “You didn’t tell her?”

Hardison shrugs. “Thought she might like the surprise?”

“What surprise? What’s going on? And why did you need to move the tables? I had them all perfectly arranged for maximum surveillance capability.”

Now it’s Hardison’s turn to be shocked as he stares at the blond. “Hold up! Are you telling me the reason you were so insistent about putting up all the furniture was because you wanted to spy on our customers?”

“Well, duh.”

“It’s what I would’ve done.” Elliot reaches down and points at a pale mark on the floor. “Matter of fact, I made sure that I’d know exactly where to put ‘em back, too.”

“Dude, you messed with my floors?”

“It’s just chalk!”

Parker leans back, relaxed now that she knows things will eventually be put back as they were. “So, what is it all for?”

“Thanksgiving dinner.”

“But…” She points, counting. “There are at _least_ fifteen times as many seats here than what we would need.”

“Well, that’s because we have guests.”

“What guests?”

There’s a knock on the front door. Hardison smiles. “Why don’t you go see while Elliot and I start setting up the food?” He turns to see the other man glaring at him. “What?”

“You really think I’m going to let you back into my kitchen after what happened the last time?”

“What? I just wanted to-“ Whatever he’s going to say next is interrupted by the slamming of the front door, followed by the reappearance of Parker next to him.

“There’s a bunch of people out there!” Her hands twist together as her eyes dart back and forth nervously. “…..oh, yeah. And Nate and Sophie!”

“Yes, Parker. They’re our guests. You should let them in.” Hardison puts a hand around hers, squeezes for a moment, then lets go as her breathing calms down.

“Oh.” Her brow furrows. “But where did they come from?”

“Well…” The guys look at each other, neither one sure anymore if their idea will be so well-received. Finally, Elliot speaks up. “We thought, maybe, since you said that you never got to have that kind of Thanksgiving, maybe there were other people around here in the same boat. So Hardison went and looked up the records for last Thanksgiving, and then we invited as many as we could who it looked like weren’t going to have a good one this year either.”

Parker’s eyes go wide before she throws her arms around them both, dropping her head down so they can’t see her face. Then she bounds away again, calling out as she goes, “You still should have told me first!”  

“Some things never change.”

“Nope.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, what did you think? I hope someone teared up at the end. I did, thinking of it. 
> 
> Anyway, if anybody has suggestions or prompts, feel free to send them to me on tumblr (same name as I've got here.) Or if you just want to talk headcanons, come by to do that too!


End file.
